John West

The Question of Organic Unity

(February 1936)

From New International, Vol.3 No.2, pp.17-22.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).

IT IS AN instructive and, in its own way, an entertaining political exercise to sit down for a few hours with a file of the Daily Worker and to compare recent issues with those of three or even two years ago. It is hard in any other way, even for those who follow events carefully day by day, to realize the breathtaking extent of the turn of the Communist International. To a man from a political Mars—let us say, a serious and interested observer from outside the labor movement—the contrast could appear only as a lawless and inexplicable fantasy. Can the horned social-Fascist sprout comradely wings almost overnight? Can a ponderous Federation of Labor change, chameleon-like, from a main agent of finance capital to the chief bulwark of the workers?

Can the church, the overpowering ideological tyrant of the masses, become at one breath the great ally against war? Can the dove of peace so gracefully settle over Geneva, that charnel house of imperialist bandits? Our eyes, scanning the past and present of the Daily Worker, bear the witness that these things can indeed be, that in fact they are. Moreover—it is the Daily Worker itself again which informs us—they can be without contradiction, representing all of them merely the consistent revolutionary Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist line of the Comintern, one and indivisible.

Now there is a certain truth in the contention of the Daily Worker that the line of the Communist International during the two periods is consistent, though the consistency is of course not one of avowed policy and approved tactic. It is consistent in the sense that the line in both periods, in the face of differing international conditions, represents the interests of the reactionary bureaucracy now in control of the Soviet Union. There is a historical lawfulness underlying the chaotic surface, which clarifies and gives meaning to that surface. Marxists do not explain political events in terms of the psychological aberrations and peculiarities of individuals, even when these individuals are Stalins or Mussolinis. The new line of the Comintern is neither the result of Stalin’s suddenly “coming to his senses after the adventurism of the Third Period”, nor of his unexpectedly slipping from revolutionary grace after years of Leninist intransigence. The new line is the necessary consequence of the whole course of Stalinism as it works out in the period following the defeat in Germany and the intensification of the war crisis.

However, what I am here concerned with are certain features of the new line itself, certain new problems to which it gives rise, and in particular the problem of “organic unity” which is posed as a result of the application of the new line on an international scale.

It must, first of all, be understood that the new line of the Communist International was not “created” by the Seventh Congress. The turn began—at first somewhat erratically and on local fronts—a few months after Hitler came to power. It had already gained powerful international momentum by last summer. The Seventh Congress formulated a confused, hypocritical and deceptive account of what had already, in considerable part, taken place. The Seventh Congress, however, also speeded up the application of the new turn, drew out its implications more fully and whipped the few falterers into harness.

If we examine the political meaning of the resolutions and speeches of the Seventh Congress, we naturally enough find it resting firmly on the doctrine of socialism in one country, the heart and lungs of Stalinism. That is to say, it rests on the denial of revolutionary internationalism, on the bureaucratic conception of Utopia in one’s own pasture and the devil take the neighbor’s. This doctrine was firmly embedded in the Sixth Congress, and in the program of the CI, which was its product. Its immediate consequence, indeed its concomitant, was the bureaucratisation of the party: in other words, the denial of one primary principle of Marxism was achieved only by the denial of another—of the principle of democratic centralism in the structure of the party.

But it was of course impossible for Stalinism to stop at this point. And in the records of the Seventh Congress we find that the gangrene, spreading inevitably from its original source throughout the organism, has poisoned in turn the other fundamental principles of revolutionary Marxism. This is above all clear in the case of two decisive questions: the theory of the state, and the principles of the struggle against imperialist war. The Seventh Congress bases itself on Kautsky’s conception of the state, and on social-patriotism.

The adoption of the revisionist theory of the state—the abandonment of the uncompromising conception of the state as the executive committee of the class enemy—is shown in every crucial position adopted by the Seventh Congress. The possibility of coalition governments—governments in collaboration with bourgeois parties (so long as these are “anti-Fascist”)—was not merely recognized but advocated. In the place of the Marxian policy of defense of the democratic rights of the workers and exploited masses, the resolutions of the Congress advocate defense of bourgeois democracy: that is, defense of one form of the class rule of the bourgeoisie. The revolutionary struggle for workers’ power gives way, in the speech of Dimitroff, to the purely negative and defensive conception of a coalition government of the “anti-Fascist People’s Front” which by a mysterious process of dialectic will pass into “the democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants” and hence into socialism.

Thoroughgoing social-patriotism is erected into basic dogma. Support of the governments of any country allied with the Soviet Union in a war crisis is made obligatory. The Geneva League of Imperialists becomes the stronghold of world peace. All communists are called upon to support League (i.e., imperialist) sanctions against “aggressors”—in other words, to support their imperialist governments when these governments chance to fit into the momentary plans of Stalin. The wars of “democratic” nations against Fascist nations (France against Germany, the United States against Japan) are no longer imperialist but “just” and “progressive” wars.

The results of the cumulating abandonment of Marxian principles by the Comintern, both before and since the Seventh Congress, are showing themselves in every field of practical activity. Throughout the world, the dual “red” trade unions have been rapidly thrown overboard, and their members ordered back into the main body of the trade union movement. But far from representing a correction of the sectarian isolationism of the “Third Period”, the movement back into the mass trade unions has been carried out in the form of a capitulation to the old-line reformist trade union bureaucrats. The Comintern has even gone so far as to announce willingness to dissolve the party fractions in the unions, or in other words to abandon every form of revolutionary activity in the basic organizations of the working class. Beginning with France, the slogans for a People’s Front of capitulation to a middle class program have been mechanically extended to all countries. In England, the communist party has formally applied for admission to the Labour party. In France, the communist party, through the People’s Front, has steadfastly supported the Laval-Herriot government and has become the most ardent defender of “the (bourgeois) republic” against its opponents from the right—and from the left. In Czechoslovakia, the communist electors voted for Benes in the recent election. In Great Britain, the communist party put forward only three independent candidates in the General Elections. In all countries, including the United States, the communist parties are supporting in elections socialists, “labor” candidates, and even various types of “fusion” and liberal tickets. In Wisconsin, the communist party has entered into the strange melange of the LaFollettes, Hoan, farm coöperatives, milk producers, etc., which will probably support Roosevelt in the Fall elections. The “anti-war” meetings and demonstrations are turned over almost exclusively to ministers, generals, rabbis, Negro fakers, lazy liberals, and “sympathetic” Congressmen and politicians out for a few votes. The Stalinists have become the great expounders of “the French approach”, “the American approach”, “the Spanish approach” ... in a most confused and reactionary form. Communists now “love their country” and “their country’s flag” (see the Daily Worker, Dec. 20).

In all of these concrete day-by-day developments, one general fact is of central importance in the present connection: on each issue the communist parties in their new turn approach the practises and methods of social democracy. Consequently, in the concrete question of the relations to social democracy we find this same trend. The united front with the socialist comrades has become a central slogan. And a united front at all costs, on any terms. The Stalinists declare themselves willing to achieve the united front at any sacrifice of program, principle, or organizational prestige. They will turn over full profits on a debate with the same “conciliatory” spirit that they let socialists write the program and make the key speeches.

But, naturally, this presupposes what has likewise been accomplished during the last year and a half, and given theoretical formulation at the Seventh Congress: namely, the abandonment, in its entirety, of the theory of social-Fascism. One remembers with at least a touch of irony how even two years ago any attack on this theory was greeted by howls of “Trotskyism”. No spokesman for the CI has bothered to clarify what was wrong with the theory or why it was abandoned. It was just quietly, in the dark of political night, dumped overboard. And the social-Fascist, objective twin (not antipodes) of Fascism, has become the closest comrade.

When we search to the political roots, there is of course nothing surprising in the rapproachement with social democracy. The truth of the matter is this: the present program of the CI, in the key questions of principle, is itself a social democratic program. Consider the great polemics which Lenin directed against social democracy. They were directed precisely against those ideas which form the foundation arches of the current CI program: against the abandonment of revolutionary internationalism, against the revisionist theory of the state, against social-patriotism. And the present social democratization of the CI program leaves it not less, but on the whole more to the Right than classic social democracy. It is the dregs of social democracy, in their most vicious form, which the CI, in political fundamentals, has taken over. Consequently, proceeding from reactionary social democratic principles, the CI is necessarily led to reactionary social democratic practise. And, with the same necessity, it is led to the rapproachement with the organization which holds first title to these principles and practises: to the parties of the Second International.

II.

On their side, the parties of the Second International have not stood still during the past two and a half years. It is incorrect to say—as has sometimes been said—that the CI did not react from the catastrophe in Germany, the Austrian and Spanish events, and the sharpening of the war crisis. The new line of the CI represents just this reaction. The new line is the frantic, mechanical and disastrous response of the opportunist and reactionary bureaucracy of the Soviet Union to the recent international developments. Because of the rigidly bureaucratized structure of the communist parties, this response has been translated directly and entirely throughout the sections of the CI. The new line does not in any sense represent a deepening of the experience of the masses in general or of the membership of the communist parties. It has been imposed arbitrarily from above, and serves only to disorient further the rank and file members, and non-party workers under Stalinist influence. It is the further extension of a disease, not a step on the road back to health. And, thanks to the monolithism of the CI, the new line is carried out immediately and uniformly on an international scale. This does not mean that it does not meet with a certain resistance from the genuinely proletarian elements in the Stalinist ranks. But such resistance is prevented from developing in a normal fashion; it is suffocated almost at birth. Critics are simply tossed aside as “Trotskyists”, and the bureaucracy goes along at its own pace.

On the other hand, the response to the events of the past two and a half years within world social democracy has been thoroughly different in character. Partly this follows from the differing structural form of the Second International from that of the Third International. The international organization of the parties of the Second International is far looser; uniformity is not demanded from the affiliated national organizations; and a very considerable variety of principle and practice is possible. Variety of opinion of course revolves on the whole within certain more or less definite limits; but at the present time, largely because of the impact of world events, these limits are wider than normal. As a consequence we find that the response to the present crisis by world social democracy is openly expressed not merely by the reaction of the international and national bureaucracies—as in the case of the CI and its sections—but by ferment and turmoil from within the parties, deeper down into the ranks of the members. These represent, usually in distorted and confused forms, more genuine efforts to learn from historical experience and to draw more appropriate conclusions than is possible to hardened bureaucracies.

The ferment partly takes the form of the factional struggles now being waged within the social democracy, one phase of which has recently come to a head in this country. We are confronted by a maze of conflicting currents. There are the politically ossified reformists who resist every clamor of history—such as the “Old Guard” group in this country or the trade union officials of the British Labour party. There are the Right-Centrists, of whom the Austro-Marxists are the most outstanding, who, without undergoing any genuinely progressive development, nevertheless have found it necessary to alter their phraseology in order to provide sufficient red coloration to hold the allegiance of their Leftward moving following. The old formula of “peaceful evolution toward socialism” no longer serves; and they now include phrases about armed defense by the workers “if the counter-revolution resorts to force”. Social-patriotism of the 1914 defense-of-the-fatherland variety gives way to new forms involving defense of the Soviet Union and of democracy against Hitler and Fascism. Blum, as well as Bauer, Dan and the rest, is probably to be included in this tendency. A certain distance further to the Left are to be found such forces as the Socialist League in England and the Thomas group in this country, in the case of which outright social-patriotism is replaced by a kind of Left pacifism. Further to the Left are the Centrists of the type of the Militants in this country, who can issue programs close to Marxism on many of the key questions.

Now, the crucial point is that all of these (and other) varieties of Centrism which are appearing openly within the social democratic parties reflect much deeper movements to the Left on the part of the rank and file membership of the parties. These movements are the response of the membership to the triumph of Hitler, the Austrian and Spanish events, the war crisis and the general deepening of the capitalist contradictions. They are reflected at various stages of their development by the factional groupings and re-groupings in the leadership, and by new programs, resolutions and policies which more or less accurately express them. In certain cases, the leadership and programs—as, for example, in the case of the Right Centrists—represents objectively an effort to prevent, to turn aside and barricade the Leftward movement from below from finding its full historical expression in the revolutionary Marxian position. In others the factional programs and ideas are in a sense steps on the road to clarification. However, with the exception of certain sections of the French socialist youth and smaller sections of the French adult party, almost no open and organized expression of the completion of the Leftward movement within the ranks of the social democracy is yet to be found. Such expression—i.e., a Marxian program and Marxian tactics—presupposes the active intervention of Marxists; the Leftward movement can be consummated only by becoming fully conscious, by its union with Marxism. That this should have been accomplished, if only so far to a minor extent, in France is due to two factors: the advance in France of the class struggle toward a revolutionary crisis; and, second, the direct intervention of the Bolshevik-Leninists in the internal development of the French Socialist party.

From even so brief a survey of the social democracy, a conclusion of primary importance emerges: Understood concretely, in terms of historical actuality, that is of change, movement, and development, the parties of the Second International stand today to the Left of the parties of the Third International. Even the programs of the Left Centrist groupings are far to the Left of the current program and strategy of the CI, as the positions on war so strikingly reveal. But more than this is involved. The fundamental point is that now (it is about now that we are speaking), in terms of the dynamics of development, the parties of the Second International contain within them far greater progressive potentialities than the Stalinist parties.

III.

A review of the present positions of the parties of the Second and Third Internationals provides the requisite background for a correct understanding of the problem of “organic unity” as it now presents itself to the labor movement.

Abstractly considered, in the full literal sense, “organic unity” refers to the actual fusion of the parties of the two Internationals, and of the two Internationals themselves. But this would be the completion of a process, and cannot be treated merely in the abstract. Actual organic unity has not of course been accomplished, nor indeed is it to be anticipated in the immediate future. But the process, the completion of which may be actual fusion, has already made an extensive beginning.

Let us review certain facts, some of which have been mentioned above, in another connection: The theory of social-Fascism has been entirely abandoned. In all countries the communist parties have either achieved, or are conducting mighty campaigns for, the united front in all fields with the respective parties of the Second International. In Germany and even more in Austria, local united fronts of the underground organizations are apparently widespread. In Great Britain the application for admission of the communist party to the Labour party has been formally made on a thoroughly capitulationist basis. In France the united front was established some time ago, and has been merged into the amorphous and reactionary People’s Front. In election campaigns the communist parties put forward increasingly fewer independent candidates, and support “labor” or non-working class candidates. The “red unions” have been almost wholly liquidated into the mass Federations which, in most countries, are under social democratic leadership. For the first time in a decade, last autumn, a meeting of the Second International heard spokesmen of the CI; and a majority of the parties represented declared for a united agreement, though action was postponed at the insistence of the dissenting minority. In all “democratic” countries, on the Ethiopian question, the communist parties have lined up with the Right wing of the social democracy.

The process is clearly illustrated in this country. Here the red unions are all back in the fold. Every day the campaigns in the Daily Worker for the united front, with sly hints about future “unity”, wax louder. Browder and Thomas are debating each other from New York to Chicago. The National Student League and the Student League for Industrial Democracy have been dissolved into the American Student Union. The Unemployment Councils are preparing to liquidate into the socialist-controlled Workers Alliance of America, and have already done so in many localities. The Young Communist. League, following the recent Congress of the Young Communist International and in line with its international orientation, has publicly proposed the actual fusion of the Young Communist League with the Young People’s Socialist League, and the merging of both into a broad “anti-Fascist” youth movement. In the labor defense field, the International Labor Defense, after so many desert years, is entering into united fronts with the socialist defense committee (e.g., on the Herndon and Scottsboro cases), and is bringing forward slogans of fusion of the defense organizations. Official socialist party observers were present at the third Congress of the American League against War and Fascism; and the communist party has expressed its willingness to dissolve the League into a united front grouping which will include the socialist party. Communist party members are being sent wholesale into the branches of the socialist party and the YPSL. In the November elections the communist party supported socialist party candidates in many instances throughout the country.

Whoever imagines that “organic unity” is a problem for the future which we can merely sit back and contemplate for the time being simply does not understand what organic unity means. Organic unity, not as an abstraction, but as a slogan and a process, is already operating, is already a powerful force in the international labor movement.

IV.

How far, then, will this process of “organic unity” go? Will it be carried to formal completion in the actual merging of the two Internationals and their national sections ?

There can be no doubt that, as a slogan and a process, organic unity will go much further than it has up to the present—though even this is a good distance. Of course, from the point of view of the Communist International, organic unity is only part of the total process, one important step on the present road. The Comintern aims not merely to swallow the parties of the Second International, but the “People’s Front”, and all that goes with it. In desperate fright, the Comintern strives to prepare, in time, a mass following in the democratic countries through which pressure can be put on the home governments to line up with the Soviet Union in the coming war, and to recruit solders to be sent into the imperialist armies against the states openly fighting against the Soviet Union—which the Soviet Union expects to be Japan and Germany. For this purpose, which is the key to the Comintern’s present policy, the organic unity development is not enough, but is an essential prerequisite.

The forces impelling the drive toward organic unity are, at first sight, irresistible. Above all, it must be understood that the full political basis for organic unity has already been laid. The Seventh Congress records the fact that no essential difference of principle now divides the two Internationals. It is an axiom of Marxism that organizational conclusions tend imperiously to follow from political premises. Today principled political considerations no longer block, but on the contrary, push together the two Internationals.

Secondly, as already indicated, the development of the war crisis, at least in its present direction, dictates organic unity. Stalin needs organic unity, above all in France, Great Britain, Czechoslovakia and the United States, as a step toward the People’s Front for defense of the Soviet Union through defense of the imperialist fatherland. Here, too, the perspective of Stalinism coincides with the perspective of social democracy and the major sections of the socialist parties in France, Czechoslovakia and Great Britain, and with the social-patriots within the divided Socialist party of the United States.

Thirdly, there is an unquestionable pressure of the masses of the workers both within and outside of the political parties toward unity in general and thus toward organic unity as a step apparently nearer the goal. The workers are wearied with the long years of division in the labor movement. They sense the imperative need for unity against the onslaught of reaction and war, but they do so in a confused manner, without understanding clearly the issues involved in the problem of unity; and thus they provide both fertile ground for the treacherous slogans of Stalinism and a pressure from below supplementing these slogans.

These three considerations might seem to make organic unity close to inevitable. Nevertheless, the process, upon further examination, is seen to run up against a contradiction, and it is not yet clear which side of the contradiction will carry the day.

It is true that, at the present moment, the political basis for organic unity is laid. But, though organizational conclusions ordinarily follow from political premises, they do not always do so in a uniform or rapid manner. There are bureaucratic obstacles which hinder completion. Thus, the social democratic bureaucracy naturally hesitates to give up its intrenched positions within “its own” organization. And, in the present instance, there are further obstacles.

Though there is now a temporary political coincidence in essential matters between the social democracy and Stalinism, the crucial fact remains that social democracy and Stalinism reach this position from different directions. Social democracy and Stalinism have been and remain the expression of different class forces and interests. The social democratic bureaucracy, in a crisis (war, insurrection), functions as the agent of finance capital within the ranks of the working class. The Stalinist bureaucracy, on the other hand, functions as the agent of the corrupt, parasitic and reactionary ruling strata of the Soviet Union—that is, of the workers’ state—within the ranks of the working class. For the moment, the interests of the two bureaucracies coincide, but because of the differing social roots, there can be no guarantee in advance that they will continue indefinitely in the future to coincide.

Stalinism must attempt to keep a free hand, to be in a position to make another sudden and sharp turn. For example, if the Franco-Soviet Pact should be repudiated, and a rapproachement between France and Germany take place, the entire Stalinist policy in France, and the war position of the CI as a whole would have to be profoundly altered. This would spike organic unity developments, since Blum and his companions of the SFIO leadership would in that event, though changing phrases, no doubt still remain basically devoted to the bourgeois fatherland.

For this reason, from the point of view of Stalinism, organic unity is immensely useful as a slogan and in most of its initial phases, but would have grave dangers if carried all the way through. Stalin may find himself in such a tight spot as to have to go through with it, or may find his hold on the rank and file becoming too overwhelming to oppose; but it would unquestionably serve the purposes of Stalinism better to allow organic unity to operate, extensively indeed, but short of consummation in the actual fusion of the two Internationals.

There is another obstacle, of a very different kind, to the completion of the Stalinist capitulatory conception of organic unity. This is the opposition which it meets and will meet from the Left. Such opposition is not yet articulate within the communist parties, and, because of their monolithic structure and the systematic mis-education of the membership, has a discouraging prospect in any attempt to come to the surface. Nevertheless it is hard to believe that it will not slowly take form among the proletarian sections still under Stalinist influence, and finally break out, perhaps in a major upheaval. But it is at present and in the immediate future within the Leftward moving sections of the socialist parties that we find and shall find opposition to the organic unity movement from the Left. It is already present, though still for the most part in a confused form.

Opposition from the Right wing of social democracy, of course, still continues, appealing largely to memories of the “Third Period” and doubts as to the “sincerity” of the Stalinists. Such opposition, however, is a comparatively minor matter. The Stalinists are “sincere” enough, in all conscience, and the “Third Period” is already a hazy antique. The line of the CI on the key questions is the line of Right wing social democracy. No opposition from the Right, therefore, can stand up indefinitely against the inroads of Stalinism. Only opposition from the Left can be meaningful and effective.

There are, in the socialist parties, growing numbers of Leftward moving members who are coming to realize doubts about Stalinist organic unity which are not at all based on memories of the “Third Period” or worries over sincerity. Rather are they arising from the spectacle of Stalinist capitulation, above all from Stalinist social-patriotism. They begin to wonder whether “one inclusive united party” will be so beneficial to the working class, if it is to be an anti-revolutionary party, a party of social-patriotism to serve as recruiting agent in the coming war. It is in the development of such conceptions that the agitation and activities of the revolutionists become of crucial and decisive importance. Against the treachery of Stalinism only the revolutionary Marxian position can stand. And likewise, only the Marxian program and the conscious intervention of the Marxists can bring the Leftward moving socialists to a full understanding of the meaning of their partly formed opposition to Stalinism, and the revolutionary implications of their development.

V.

The imperative, the absolutely necessary requirement of the present epoch is the re-groupment of the revolutionists, the unity of the revolutionary forces on the basis of a revolutionary program in the re-creation of the party of Marx and of Lenin—that is, in the Fourth International. To this task, all other tasks are secondary. Success in this task alone can defeat Fascism, can alone utilize the coming imperialist war for the overthrow of finance-capital and the triumph of the workers. Unity? Yes! But revolutionary, Marxian unity. This alone will answer.

The Stalinist organic unity party, like the entire organic unity process, would be not the party of the proletarian vanguard, of revolutionary internationalism, but the party of capitulation, of social-patriotic betrayal. Of this there can be no doubt. The Stalinist drive for organic unity is, in the present concrete circumstances (and, once again, it is about these that we are talking), not in any sense a leading of the masses forward along the revolutionary path, but, precisely, a conspiracy to prevent, to shut off and turn aside the growingly conscious workers from development toward a revolutionary position; to disorient and confuse the workers; to swing their eyes toward a blind and hopeless alley; and, finally, to betray the masses to the war. Cynically, brutally, Stalinism exploits and manipulates the genuine, legitimate and altogether healthy desire of the masses for unity, for its own ends—the interests of the treacherous bureaucracy of the Soviet Union.

Unity, yes. But what kind of unity? With what kind of content? For the political party these two questions are all important. In the mass organizations they are less paramount—in their case, unity at any, or almost any, cost, though of course the best possible kind under the circumstances, and a chance for the revolutionists to work within them. But politically, nothing can be more deceptive than the conception of unity in the abstract. What is needed is not abstract unity, but concrete unity of the revolutionary forces. What, after all, is the great type of political unity in modern times? It is national unity, the “sacred union” of all classes in the bourgeois state. And the Stalinist version of “organic unity”, especially carried through to the stage of “People’s Front unity”, is nothing else than a second-hand edition of national unity. The same suppression of potential social conflicts, the same demagogic program, the same blurring of class lines.

We are asked, “Are the Marxists against unity? Will they stand in the way, to sabotage and disrupt?” Certainly not. The Marxists are for unity, for the only unity which can have any possibility of advancing the cause of the proletariat. But the Marxists are against reformism, against Centrism, against Stalinism, against these and every other form of betrayal of the workers. For unity, yes: for revolutionary unity.

But the road to revolutionary unity is neither simple nor direct. Its course cannot be wholly plotted in advance. Perhaps—and this is not yet clear—it may lie through such a party of organic unity as would be created through the merging of the Second and Third Internationals. This may not be true—for one obvious reason, because the merger may never take place. Again, it may be forestalled, and the basis for revolutionary unification may be laid, with the help of a strong and Leninist application of the united front as a means both to weld together the masses, and to isolate the Stalinists and reformists alike. The latter possibility depends decisively upon the course of the development of the Left socialists. But even if the road lies through a party of organic unity, the basic and essential task remains the same. Union of the Second and Third Internationals and their programs—that is, the combination of the errors and betrayals of social democracy and Stalinism—can in no degree solve the problem of revolutionary unity. Within such a party, as now when that party is still a slogan, a process and a perspective, the solution would be and could only be: the break with reformism, Stalinism and Centrism, the regroupment of the revolutionists under the program of Leninism. Then, as now, the solution of the problem of revolutionary unity is nothing else than the building of the Fourth International.